The Before
by Kay Willow
Summary: One day, Kizna had a dream of what had gone before. And she learned that sometimes what seems to be true... is true.


This fic is dedicated to Tony-san, whose birthday is today, and who is the biggest Kizna fan I know. Happy birthday, Tony-san! 

Everyone should feel free to read this fic. I believe there's nothing objectionable about it. It's not anti-anybody, and it's not really offensive to anybody, and it doesn't hint at anything anybody shouldn't like. 

So what are you waiting for? Read! 

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THE BEFORE   
a fic about the bond between people   
by Kay Willow   
  


_ I've met you before._   
_ Zero._   
_ Do you remember?_   


Another explosion at the fore rocked the Pro-Ing, and Kizna's fingers flew across the control panel to balance the unstable craft. 

"These Victim..." Zero gritted. "Too slow, too slow, too SLOW!" He whipped around before she'd finished the corrections, almost subconsciously adjusting his aim and his swing to accommodate for the lilting of his navigational systems. Another B-Class died, shrieking as his beamgun tore through it. "Kizna! Can't we up the difficulty level or something?!" 

Oh, sure, easy for HIM to say; he only has to shoot stuff!> Kizna would've loved to be able to screech at him, but she was too busy maintaining the Cueval-simulated Pro-Ing and keeping him from getting hurt that she barely managed to answer at all. "This is the highest difficulty level available for Second Troop extracurricular practice!" 

"Then get permission from an Instructor so I can actually make some progress here! This is a total--" BOOM "--waste--" BOOM "--of my TIME!" 

Kizna slammed her palm down on the abort button. She listened to Zero's startled squawk as the motor lock released him without warning, and smirked to herself in triumph as she finally got to make her point intelligently. "Moron! Think about your partner for once! This is all fun and games for YOU, but I'M left to struggle to keep up with you!" 

Zero muttered curses and didn't respond. Kizna took that as a good sign. If he weren't seriously considering her words, he'd just object automatically and not allow her to get a statement in edgewise for her argument. 

"If I can't even keep up with you from the control panel, you can be sure that your friends and teammates won't be able to keep up with you in a real battle," she continued, feeling vaguely triumphant already. Zero was dense, but not stupid; if he was really listening to her, he'd soon see that her point was correct. "It's all well and good to be fast and gifted on the battlefield, but if you can't work together with the others around you, there's no point, is there? You'll just get in more trouble than you're already in." 

The words sounded familiar. She thought that maybe, just maybe, she'd said them to him somehow before. 

There was a long pause, and then Zero's voice, tinny and distorted but still confident, came over the speakers. "You're right," he admitted easily. "I'll try and beat this level at a normal pace." 

Kizna relaxed a little. "Alright then," she responded, wanting to thank him for being reasonable but unable to say it. Thanking people had never been her specialty. "Let's try this again from the top, okay?" 

She triggered the simulation engine again, and as the chaotic simplicity of Cueval closed in around them, she closed her eyes and thought for a moment about something she couldn't remember.   


_ We've always been together._   
_ Time after time after time._   
_ Partners._   


Kizna studied the score sheets, scowling. "What does it mean, minus for accuracy? He hit everything he swung at, didn't he?" 

The dining hall was buzzing with similar conversations and idle chatter, but her voice was outraged enough that the girls sitting across from her heard perfectly well. Tukasa smiled and went back to her meal without commentary, but the other girls leaned in to see what she meant. 

"It kept him from a perfect score," Saki mused. "That must've really hurt! Poor Zero!" 

Ikhny murmured, "They gave him full points for attitude, though." 

"That's not hard to get," Kizna responded with a wink to Saki. "As long as your Candidate actually fights, that is." Saki huffed in mock-offense and took a defiant bite of her lunch. 

"Hiead-san gets points taken off attitude for overzealousness," the mousy girl said, lips quirking upwards in a ghost of a smile. 

Wrecka made a righteous sound in the back of her throat and nodded. "And he deserves it." 

"They never took away points for eagerness before he came along," Tukasa added meaningfully. 

"Eagerness is one word for it," Kizna stated. "Bloodlust is another." 

The girls exchanged quick grins, although Ikhny looked around nervously to be sure her assigned partner wasn't in hearing range. He was, as always, sitting in a far corner of the dining hall, by himself, ignoring everyone. She turned back and smiled shyly, silent agreement with the others. 

"Let's see his score sheet," Wrecka said curiously. "How'd he do?" 

"He has the same score Zero-san does," Ikhny returned, shying away automatically and shoving the paper under her tray as Wrecka leaned in to take a look. 

Kizna frowned, hearing that. "He always has the same score Zero does," she said. "It's starting to bother me." 

"It is kind of strange," Wrecka agreed without much interest, and returned to picking through her salad warily. 

Kizna didn't know Hiead very well -- who did? -- but something about him bothered her. His coldness and cruelty, to be sure, but something else as well, and she couldn't put her finger on it. Every time she attempted to ponder the matter, something interrupted her, and she could never quite pin down the odd feeling. Something like déjà vu, as if he was familiar to her, like Zero was somehow familiar to her, but not quite the same... 

"Kizna! What's with this score?! Minus for accuracy?!" 

Zero simply exploded into their midst without warning, making Saki choke on her food and Ikhny jump in place. Absentmindedly, he checked to make sure they were okay before arrowing in on Kizna again and jabbing a finger at his score sheet, identical to the one she'd received. "Minus for accuracy? I hit everything I swung at, didn't I?!" 

Kizna grinned, unable to stop herself even though she knew it would only make Zero angrier. Her own words, coming from his mouth, sounding exactly as outraged as she had been... They were so similar sometimes that it eclipsed all their differences and connected them on a level she'd never expected.   


_ Partners, and more than partners._   
_ Deeper than that, more permanent, something special._   
_ Siblings._   


She didn't understand how he could have ever hated the serenity of space. There was the innate fear of being suspended in nothing, with no safeties or supports, and the ever-present fear of drifting off and never returning, of course. But something about being out there, among the countless stars and planets that littered the mind-bogglingly huge universe, quieted the restless soul and comforted the weary heart. Kizna had always loved space. 

Zero wasn't afraid of space anymore -- hadn't been since his earliest days in the Pro-Ing -- but he still was by no means fond of it, and it only took a little disturbance to make him queasy. He preferred not to join Kizna on her recreational trips to the outer shell. She didn't blame him for that; few people enjoyed venturing to the outer shell of GOA, where it would be so easy to drift away. Weightlessness could be found with a minimum of effort on the warship itself... but not that sense of peace. 

"Booooring." 

She'd finally managed to bludgeon him into coming along, but he wasn't being very good company. 

"It's not supposed to be riveting! Why don't you just relax and soak in the atmosphere? Why do you always have to be doing something?!" she snapped back, irritated that he wouldn't just share in the peace. 

"Soak in the atmosphere and I will spontaneously decompress," Zero said loftily, stomping around with dramatically in his spacesuit as though trying to affect the orbit of the Academy with his slight weight alone. 

"That's not the term that you're looking for." 

"Shut up." 

Kizna smirked briefly as Zero stalked back over and sat himself down with contrasting delicacy to one side of her. Once safely grounded he let out a deep breath and flopped into a prone position, again with melodrama dripping from every gesture. 

"Boring." 

"YOU shut up." 

But she wasn't hostile, or even really annoyed anymore. It was just all too much fun. It was so easy to relate to Zero, to smile at him no matter how he was acting, to get swept along in the sheer energy that was his life. Kizna knew that she herself had a powerful pull to others, charisma or charm that made others like and follow her in spite of themselves, but it wasn't 'unstoppable force meets immovable object' when she and Zero came together, as it should've been. For some reason they always seemed to be heading in the same direction, and it wasn't the mere title of 'partners' that made that difference. 

Being around Zero was kind of like being with family. It was so simple to be natural around him, because she didn't have to worry about what he thought about her, or whether or not she seemed feminine enough. It was too much like being with a goofy brother to matter. 

"Huh." 

"What?" she asked, glancing over at him. Perhaps he'd let himself go for a moment and let the harmonic vibrations of the universe fill his heart, heard the voices of the silent and the wishes of the lost that Kizna knew he would hear if he'd stop and listen to them. 

"For just a moment, I thought..." 

"What is it? Zero?" 

He heaved an enormous, insincere sigh. "Nope. My mistake. Still boring." 

"You little brat."   


_ We weren't always related by blood._   
_ Sometimes -- as in this life -- we were genetically unconnected._   
_ But in out hearts and souls... always..._   


Formal ceremonies didn't suit Kizna very well, but at least from the fidgeting all around her, especially from her partner to her left, she knew that she wasn't alone. 

The Administrator was droning on, but none of the Candidates were listening as he preached about the significance of this day, whatever it was. History had a way of turning off minds. Most everyone was chattering amongst themselves, Goddess Candidates doing little exercises or playing hand-games, Repairer Candidates exchanging gossip (half of them in a cluster around Wrecka-chan) or teasing their partners. 

Zero was trying to sleep standing up, but not being successful. Every now and then the Administrator would mention the Ingrids, or the Pilots, or the White Goddess, and once even Erts by name; Zero kept shooting to full awareness to see what was going on, and realize too late to salvage his doze that it wasn't actually anything about those topics. 

Kizna usually prided herself on paying attention to the lectures -- somebody had to, and her partner sure wouldn't -- but today she was distracted. She'd had the weirdest dream last night: she'd still been fifteen, but the accident that had changed her life had never happened, and she'd lived what seemed like generations ago, and Zero had been there, and they'd looked so similar that they might've been brother and sister, and maybe they had been... 

"I hate this damn uniform," Zero snarled suddenly, tugging at the sleeves and the waistline and whatever else he could reach. 

She slapped at his hands reflexively to keep him from getting it out of shape. He hadn't been quite himself in the dream... somehow he'd seemed more hostile, almost violent, and he'd been bitter and wild. But then at other times, the Zero of the dream had been funny, gentle and enthusiastic and supportive, caring and just a little bit apologetic for his earlier behavior. 

In his earlier behavior, as a matter of fact, he'd rather reminded her of Hiead. 

Kizna slid a glance over at the silver-haired boy. He stood stiffly beyond Ikhny on Zero's other side; no emotion or distraction showed on his face as he stared at the Administrator. 

What a silly thing to imagine,> she scolded herself. But it had felt so real, like an entire lifetime had been crammed into the space of a single night's dream. She couldn't bring herself to dismiss it entirely, even if pieces of it seemed so absurd now in the bright halogen lights of the gathering room. 

She'd kind of liked other pieces of it, anyway. 

"Zero," she whispered. He lifted his head from where he'd started whispering in Ikhny's ear -- from the way her hand had flown to her lips to suppress giggling, a joke of some sort -- and she pressed on. "Did you ever feel that we were alike somehow?" 

"Alike somehow?" he repeated in an undertone. "Of course! We're exactly alike! You're practically my sister!" 

Kizna stared at him, taken aback that his thoughts had run so parallel to her own, and then all at once felt the tension seep out of her muscles. It was like everyone said -- things were so natural with Zero. She should never have doubted herself. 

She smiled at once, a dazzling and ecstatic thing that had him blinking in confusion. "I was thinking that, too. In another life," she added, almost laughing out loud. "It must have been in another life." 

And she turned back to the presentation and prepared herself. It wasn't going to be easy, taking Zero to wherever he needed to go, but she had the past to help her find her way to the future. It reassured her, that she had the promise of what had gone before. 

As did their kinship.   


_ Do you remember?_   
_ Zero._   
_ We've met before._   


* * *

Inserted subtly in here is Theory #2 about Zero and Hiead. I'm more partial to Theory #1, personally, but this fic was complete like this, and I liked the fic a lot. 

This is also my perspective on Kizna and Zero's relationship. End of story. And as for the reincarnation thing...? It's been heavily hinted-at in the manga. And the other versions of Zero and Kizna DO look a lot alike. Hmm... 

--Kay Willow, preparing Chapter 1 of Crash   
MK Info Site: http://flash.to/dualpotential/   
Blog: http://kay_willow.livejournal.com/   
Email: kay_willow@hotmail.com   
Contact: (AIM) Savinsilk, (MSN) see email, (Yahoo) kay_willow 


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